TL;DR — Quick Summary

gitoxide (gix/ein) is a Git implementation written in pure Rust. Dramatically faster than C Git for many operations — clone, status, log, and more with modern safety.

gitoxide reimplements Git in Rust. Faster cloning, faster status, safer operations — the future of Git tooling.

Installation

# macOS
brew install gitoxide

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S gitoxide

# Cargo (full features)
cargo install gitoxide

# Provides two binaries:
# gix — low-level plumbing commands
# ein — high-level porcelain commands

Usage

# Clone (fast)
ein tool clone https://github.com/user/repo
ein tool clone --bare https://github.com/user/repo

# Repository info
gix repository info
gix index info

# Object inspection
gix log
gix tree
gix show HEAD

# Status
gix status

# Pack operations (very fast)
gix pack create
gix pack verify
gix pack index create

# Free operations (no repo needed)
gix free index info
gix free pack receive

# Benchmark vs git
time git clone --bare https://github.com/torvalds/linux
time ein tool clone --bare https://github.com/torvalds/linux

Performance

Operationgit (C)gitoxideSpeedup
Clone (bare)~60s~20s~3x
Status~200ms~50ms~4x
Pack verify~30s~8s~4x
Object count~15s~3s~5x

Summary

  • gitoxide is a pure Rust Git implementation (gix + ein binaries)
  • 2-10x faster than C Git for many operations
  • Memory-safe, parallel by default, modern architecture
  • Used as a library by cargo, Helix, GitButler
  • Rapidly gaining features — the future of Git tooling